Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a power transmission apparatus, a power transmission method, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a technique for supplying power in non-contact manner (wirelessly) has been known. There are four systems for supplying power in non-contact manner, i.e., an electromagnetic induction system, a magnetic field resonance system, an electric field coupling system, and an electric wave receiving system. The magnetic field resonance system is characterized by sufficient power to be transmitted and a long power transmission distance. Thus, the magnetic field resonance system has been particularly paid attention to out of the four systems. In the magnetic field resonance system, a 1-to-N power supply system in which a power transmission apparatus transmits power to a plurality of wireless power receiving apparatuses with use of the long power transmission distance has been proposed.
In a 1-to-N communication system, a technique for detecting a plurality of apparatuses on a network has been known. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-286878, for example, discusses a wide area monitoring control system in which a master station device, which collects data by poling, and a plurality of slave station devices, which operates as a relay station, are connected to each other via a wireless network. In this system, the master station device changes a communication path pattern if it cannot receive data from the slave station devices within a data receiving waiting time, to receive data from the slave station devices.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-341017 discusses a technique for a master station collecting data from a plurality of slave stations connected to a bus-shaped network. In this technique, a timeout value is set for each of the slave stations, and a master station determines whether data can be collected until it reaches the timeout value set for each of the slave stations.
Conventionally, in a system for supplying power in non-contact manner, a power transmission apparatus accepts receiving of a power receiving request from a power receiving apparatus during a predetermined waiting time, to transmit power to the power receiving apparatus from which it has received the power receiving request. If the waiting time becomes too long, however, a power transmission processing time required until the power transmission is completed becomes longer.